


Doll

by ChrissiHR



Series: It's the Great Countdown, Darcy Lewis [16]
Category: Black Widow (Comics), Captain America - All Media Types, Hawkeye (Comics), Iron Man - All Media Types, MASH (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor - All Media Types, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: 31 Days Of Halloween, Adoption, Artist Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes Feels, Creature!Darcy, Cute Mute trope, Darcy Lewis is Bucky Barnes' Daughter, Drama, Family, Family Drama, Family Feels, Fluff and Humor, Found Family, Gen, M/M, Multi, Non-Human Character, Not Captain America: The First Avenger Compliant, October 16, October Prompt Challenge, POV Bucky Barnes, Poor Unfortunate Souls, Promptober, Protective Bucky Barnes, Protective Howling Commandos, Reverse time travel, Suspense, Team as Family, mute character, song prompt, the little mermaid soundtrack
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-01-18 09:30:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12385494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChrissiHR/pseuds/ChrissiHR
Summary: Night 16 ...in which the author accidentally wrote a reverse time travel AU featuring the Howling Commandos; Bucky Barnes’ battalion of baby sisters; hot, gay hero dads; hot, gay hero aunts who do everything hot gay hero dads do, backwards and in heels; Howard being Howard and also sometimes not terrible; Tony being Tony; Clint being an Actual Human Disaster; Natasha’s loving murder-gaze; Coulson fangirling (on the inside); blink-and-you-miss-it unrequited love and devotion; and Nick Fury who has had just about enough of all these assholes and their bullshit. Oh, and a war orphan who gets adopted by most of Brooklyn and all of the 107th.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zephrbabe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zephrbabe/gifts).



> Prompt: Darcy & Howling Commandos, “Poor, Unfortunate Souls” from The Little Mermaid
> 
> Note: Yes! Adoption fic again! Found family! Howlies! Lord help me, I am back on my bullshit and IT IS GREAT. This story is nearly complete and should run about ... IDEK how many chapters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With additional thanks to my pre-readers, @phoenix-173, @ibelieveinturtles, @thestanceyg
> 
> German translation:  
> Achtung: attention, warning  
> Bedrohung: threat, danger
> 
> Suggested listening: Primavera by Ludovico Einaudi

“Sarge?” Dum Dum’s voice carried down the main thoroughfare of the Hydra base of the day. They’d been averaging one or two bases a week for the last thirteen, but not for lack of trying to up their average to a solid two a week. The Brits had a team full of ringers with two full teams of tactical backup they’d been using in alternating shifts to bag a half dozen bases a month since June, or so the grapevine would have the one-oh-seven believe. Bucky would’ve liked to see that in writing, since the Howlies managed seven in a month all on their lonesome with no word since August from those snotty British upstarts on the status of their friendly wager.

“Clear!” Bucky called back from the next to last room on the east side of the cell block. He heard Steve bark another “clear!” from across the way before they moved in tandem to the last set of doors. Steve cleared his side while Bucky puzzled over the heavy steel door on his side. It looked nothing like any of the others along the same corridor with its reinforced hinges and industrial hardware.

“Whatcha think’a that, pal?” he asked his best friend and captain, running a fingernail shiny with gun oil across the heavy welds overlapping the hinges.

Together, they inspected the strange, rubbery seal around the edges of the doorway.

“Either somethin’ too nasty to let out or somethin’ they didn’t want gettin’ away, I figure.” Steve used hand signals to round up the other Howlies in their part of the base. Dum Dum and Gabe trotted down the hall while Morita stayed at the T-junction to keep an eye out for any stragglers. Falsworth and Dernier came along shortly with a stack of compact explosive packages.

“One-oh-seven team’s nearly here, rounding up a couple of foot soldiers they found out on the perimeter. Carter’s setting up the MPs to take the surviving Hydra prisoners into custody and Medical’s got orders out for any of Hydra’s hostages to report to a doctor before heading to the mess,” Falsworth reported as Frenchie fixed the packages to the hinges and top corners of the massive door.

“Just enough to break the welds, eh?” Jacques assured when Steve eyed the setup with some concern.

Fifteen seconds and one big boom later, the door popped off its hinges and fell into the hallway. As the smoke cleared, Bucky surveyed the entryway—tiled floor and walls about eight feet up to the ceiling with drains every three feet or so across the floor’s surface and a long, white table in the center of the room.

“It’s a morgue.” Dum Dum surmised, flat and expressionless. “Drains, white tile, a table with a drain board. Easy to wash down the blood.”

Which would have been fine (creepy as all hell, though it was), but in the corner on the far side of the room, a small figure huddled, bare skin prickled with gooseflesh. Thick, metal cuffs circled both wrists, with chains attached to the wall about halfway up from the floor. The poor thing only had about two and half, three foot of leeway where they crouched on the floor, arms curled over a bowed head.

Frenchie called out a greeting in German. The prisoner flinched, but didn’t answer.

He tried French next. Another flinch.

And a shiver.

Bucky waved the others back. The prisoner had dark, wet hair hanging in thick ropes around their shoulders, as if the room had been used for showering the prisoner and they’d just been left behind in the confusion. Glancing up, Bucky took note of a dozen, oddly-placed spigots overhead without shower heads. Paired with the floor drains and the tiled floor and walls… Had the room been deliberately flooded and then drained, for some reason?

The prisoner shivered again.

Bucky took off his coat, clearing the pockets of weapons and ammunition. He knelt on the floor, shuffling forward within arms’ reach, holding out the coat.

“It’s freezing in here and ya hair’s wet. Must be cold.” He shook the coat to rustle the fabric. “Can you understand anything I’m saying?”

When the coat sleeve brushed their arm, they froze. The shoulders dropped and worried eyes appeared over banged up, bare knees. Vivid blue-green eyes shone with nothing but absolute terror in a too-pale face.

“We won’t hurt ya. We’d like to get ya outta here before we blow the base.” He gestured to Jones. “My pal Gabe here is real good at pickin’ locks. If you don’t mind, he’d like to take a look at those cuffs, but there’s no point you freezin’ in the meantime.” He offered the coat again. “You can use it as a blanket if you like.”

A slim hand let go of those bare knees to reach for the coat. The chains didn’t allow for the poor soul to reach far, though.

Encouraged, Bucky shuffled a step closer, shaking out the coat like a lap blanket.

They let go of both knees to lean forward and accept the offered coat, allowing Bucky and his men a glimpse of full breasts and rounded hips. The young lady’s torso and thighs were covered in livid bruises and fingerprints. When her hair slid to the back, a large boot print became visible high on her ribs by the light of their handheld torches.

Behind Bucky, there came a collective sharp intake of breath from the men.

“If those bastards weren’t already well on their way to hell...” Dum Dum swore.

“No worries,” Falsworth assured the others. “Carter’ll save us a few of the ones who made it, once she gets a look at the girl.”

“She’s just a kid—can’t be more than fifteen or sixteen,” Jones huffed in disgust. “Goddamn Nazis.”

“I’m real sorry, doll,” Bucky changed tactics when he realized the prisoner was a young woman, probably more than a little traumatized by whatever her captors had locked her up and beaten her for. “Wish I had proper clothes for ya. We’ll find somethin’ real quick, soon’s we got ya outta here. Til then—”

He scooted close enough to tuck his coat in around her sides as clothing rustled behind him and the men piled up their own coats in offering, too.

“See that? The coats right off’a their backs.” Bucky smiled, trying to reassure the shivering teen. “Can you understand me at all?” he tried one more time.

But her gaze slid away and her bottom lip trembled.

“That’s alright. It doesn’t matter right now. How about this?” Bucky pivoted and lowered his rear to the floor, sliding backward until he sat just a foot or so away from the trembling girl. Jones covered her legs with another pair of coats and slipped the fourth behind her back to protect her bruised, abraded skin from the cold tile.

“I’m James; friends call me Bucky. Like I said before, this here is my pal, Gabe. I’ve got your back while the fellas watch the hall and Gabe gets you outta those things. You wanna—”

Bucky offered a hand and she looked at it, curious.

“—hold my hand? My lil’ sisters like to do that when they’re nervous about doing new things,” he explained, tucking more of the coats in around the girl with his free hand as her body quaked and her teeth started to chatter.

Grabbing his hand, she clutched at him with surprising strength and pulled herself halfway into his lap.

“God, doll, you’re freezing,” Bucky squawked in surprise when she tucked her chilled face against his throat.

“If I didn’t know better, Sarge,” Gabe said under his breath, taking that as his cue and working the locks, “I’d guess these heavy cuffs were made out of something like Cap’s shield.”

“Sturdy sort’a things then?” Bucky hummed, thoughtful, meeting the soldier’s wary eye over the lady’s head.

“Real sturdy—maybe the kind of thing they’d need to use on someone  _strong_ , like Cap,” he remarked with a nod to the girl shivering in his sergeant’s arms.

“Curious choice.” Bucky nodded in acknowledgement of the subtext. “Guess we’ll never know what they were thinkin’, lockin’ up some poor teener in here like a super soldier.”

“Achtung. Bedrohung,” the girl murmured into his uniform shirt, teeth chattering.

Bucky stiffened in surprise. He smoothed the curling tendrils of hair out of her face and held her close when he asked, “Do you know what those words mean?”

Her eyes were watery when they met his. A tear spilled over. She caught it on a fingertip and pressed it between her trembling lips.

“Do you?” he demanded, but she only curled her shoulders and burrowed closer, shaking her head. “ _Achtung. Bedrohung…_  Them or you?” he wondered.

But she had no more to say on the subject, so they let it go. For now.

In the end, Steve had to pry the cuffs loose. The mechanism inside was like nothing Jones had ever come across. The moment their captain peeled them off, the cuffs went in Jones’ bag so he could dissect the locking mechanism for future study back at camp.

Steve made sourcing clothing for the recovered captive a priority before they wired the base. They found a few soft flannels in the officers’ quarters for the girl to dry her skin and hair, but clothing seemed to confuse her. Like one of Bucky’s baby sisters, he had to help her pull the spare undershirt over her head and step into the trousers. She wobbled when she stood, like she’d been chained to the wall for weeks or months, rather than the days Bucky supposed it must have been, based on the newness, the pattern and color of her healing bruises. She stumbled like a new puppy in the boots he laced onto her feet over a pair of knitted socks on loan from Falsworth. Morita found a spare watch cap in his pack to offer the lady to cover her damp hair.

Bucky bundled her into his own coat. Steve didn’t often wear one because of the serum and Bucky mostly wore his for appearance’s sake, since whatever’d been done to him at Azzano had him running a temperature to rival Steve’s.

Not that anyone but him and a trustworthy, SSR nurse knew that.

“Poor darling,” Peggy clucked when they got the girl back to Medical.

And hadn’t that been a helluva trip? The girl whimpered when they left the base ‘til somebody realized her eyes were probably having trouble adjusting to daylight again. The battered teen’s abused and neglected legs refused to hold her for more than a few steps at a time, too. She ended up with Jones’ helmet clipped under her chin, piggybacking to the nearest medical transport on Steve’s back. The Howlies all piled into the first M5 they came across with promises to return it to the hundred-and-eleventh M*A*S*H unit as soon as they got the high sign from Phillips.

“There isn’t so much as a word about why they were holding her or what they planned to do with her in the scattered files we recovered,” Peggy explained to Steve hours later, while Bucky watched the girl inspect medical instruments laid out on a tray by SSR medical personnel.

Nearby, Bucky’s nurse friend smiled at the girl’s curiosity and offered her a choice of one of the special Cap Bears or Bucky Bears they kept on hand for civilian children passing through. The girl helped herself to a Bucky Bear and tipped her chin in silent thanks. She fiddled with its tiny, mock buttons and tidied its blue peacoat, casting a shy smile Bucky’s way when she caught him watching her play with her new toy.

Meanwhile, the company clerk attempted to fill out the recovered prisoner’s paperwork.

“Ma’am, if you’ll just tell me your name, this will go much faster,” the young clerk whined.

“Doll.” Bucky intervened, laying a hand over hers and the stethoscope she’d moved onto exploring next. He sat on the cot by her side and gave a good hard think to how to approach the language problem. He poked his own chest, enunciating clearly, “Bucky.”

He pointed at the nurse, “Lieutenant Bigelow.” Nurse Bigelow curtsied with a smile.

Bucky rapped the company clerk’s bony ribs with his knuckles. “Corporal O’Reilly.” The kid huffed, but had the good sense not to interrupt, at least. Bucky pointed at Steve and Peggy, next, naming them in turn. They both smiled and inclined their heads, acknowledging their names as Bucky said them.

Then, Bucky laid his fingertip on the young woman’s nose with a playful tap before moving it down to tap her gently over the breast bone, too. “You. What’s your name, doll?”

He waited while she tilted her head, deep in thought.

“Dah,” she echoed. “Dah … ll. Dahll.” She nodded, sure of her answer, tapping the same spot on her chest.

“Doll?” Bucky’s heart broke for the lost and confused little lady all over again. “That’s what you want us to call you?”

She screwed up her lips and stared at his mouth like the words made no sense.

Bucky tried again, tapping her nose, then her breastbone. “Doll?” he asked.

She inclined her head like she’d seen Steve and Peggy do. “Daahll.”

“Sir,” the clerk whispered out of the side of his mouth, “I’ll get in trouble if I put that on her papers.”

“Listen, kid.” Bucky stood and tucked the brat under his arm. “I ain’t sure she’s ever had a name before. For all we know, she was born in one’a Hydra’s labs and never even treated like a real person. Tell me what all you need and we’ll fill it in between us, you and me, since me and the fellas are the closest thing she’s got to family right now, far as we can tell.”

Which is how the young woman and former Hydra captive, Sarah Doll Barnes, got herself a name, a birthdate (the day she was rescued from Hydra), legal guardians, and a home address—Bucky’s folks by way of Bucky and Steve filling in their names as next of kin, and the mailing address for the Barnes townhouse back home in Stuyvesant Heights. The clerk typed it up all official-like on the papers and had a real government-issued ID card made and laminated, so she’d have proof of her newly acquired citizenship anywhere she traveled.

“Congratulations, sirs.” The clerk’s cheek dimpled when he handed over the papers to Bucky and Steve. “It’s a girl.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky Barnes, Helicopter Pop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pre-readers: @ibelieveinturtles, @thestanceg
> 
> Beta'd by: @phoenix-173
> 
> Suggested listening: Night by Ludovico Einaudi

“She can’t stay, Sergeant.”

“No, I know.” Bucky nodded, watching as the young, former prisoner known around camp as Dolly Barnes packed her Bucky Bear in her rucksack and finished folding trousers and undershirts into her duffel, preparing for the jeep ride to the airstrip. “I figured I’ve got enough hazard pay to send ‘er stateside on a civvie transport from London and put ‘er up with my folks back home. I got so many sisters, they won’t even notice another girl underfoot right away. Thought I had a few more weeks to get ‘er settled, is all.”

He wanted to do that for the girl who took to calling him “Pop”—mostly because the Howlies accused him of mother-henning her to death.

_“Sarge, she won’t pick it up any faster with you leaning over her shoulder. Learning letters takes time.” —Jones_

_“Quit mother-hennin’ ‘er, Barnes. She’s seen ya tie those laces a thousand times. Give ‘er a minute to try it herself.” —Dugan_

_“What are you now, her pop?” Morita raised his hands in surrender. “There’s no harm in lookin’, pal. And she’s pretty as a picture. You gonna put out the eyes of every fella who looks at ‘er between here and Brooklyn?”_

Encouraged by Bucky’s attention and warm smiles, she learned a handful of useful words and names in the weeks since they found her. The nurses took care to teach her “ouch” and “okay” and the hand signal for “okay”, too, right off, so she had the words she needed to let them know how she was coping with the medical care she received. She also learned her new name, Sarah Doll Barnes, though everyone called her Dolly, and then she picked up Pop, as well as “Peg” for Peggy, “Dummy” for Dugan, and Morita’s given name, Jim. She’d been particularly taken with Morita, the youngest of them, but he was still years too old to return Bucky’s young charge’s tender feelings, and Morita knew it.

Didn’t stop the fella from paying her a bit more attention, though, giving the girl her first real friend of an age amongst a bunch of doting elders.

Peg and the nurses fussed at her to learn how to dress like the fairer sex, but her uncommon strength turned out to be a bit much for those delicate garments and wobbly heels. Then, the first time one of the gals in camp tried to fit Dolly for a brassiere sent the girl haring off in nothing but her borrowed undershorts and boots, trailing the dressing gown behind her by the neck like a cape. After covering her up and glaring away anyone who dared look, Bucky returned her to the nurses’ tent and, with a sigh, stepped inside to show Dolly how it should go. He ended up flagging down Dernier—the only fella in camp slim enough to wrap a real woman’s brassiere around—and walked the girl through how it went on, stuffing Dernier’s cups with stockings to fill them out before pulling an undershirt on over top to show how it should look when she put it on proper.

Bucky Barnes’d never been so glad to have so many baby sisters.

Having Dolly in camp turned out a lot like being at home with all his sisters some nights, too, when a nightmare would end with the girl and her stuffed bear climbing into Bucky’s cot, trembling, with tears on her cheeks.

(Thankfully, the nurses saw to a rudimentary sort of education about her lady’s monthlies. Though Bucky knew enough to fill in the basics, it sure wouldn’t have been easy to explain with her limited vocabulary. In fact, maybe he owed one of the nurses a night out for taking one for the team there because, even though they might not have seen it as a Herculean feat, Bucky sure was glad that one thing didn't fall to him.)

Other nights found her curled up on his bunk at bedtime while Bucky searched the fellas’ packs for something to read her before bed. Something other than a Tijuana bible or the army’s training circular on rifle cleaning and maintenance. Bucky met Dernier’s offer of the lingerie section from the Sears and Roebuck with a flat expression. Fortunately, Howard offered up a handful of technical journals and engineering schematics, and Dolly took to those like a duck to water.

For hours during their downtime, Steve drew pictures for Dolly of Bucky’s sisters and parents, telling her little details about each and penciling those into the sketches as well. He drew Bucky and Becca the most, of course, being twins and Steve's best friends almost his whole life. He filled a dozen or more sketchbooks, enough to fill half Dolly's duffel and then some. In them, he drew funny caricatures of the Howling Commandos setting up tents, covered in mud, and drunk as skunks on pilfered French wine; he drew Peggy and Howard arguing in the shop; and even a picture of Col. Phillips studying a map of Hydra bases Steve recreated from memory; and, finally, a sketched portrait of Bucky’s family so realistic, it brought a tear to Bucky’s eye.

“This here, this is Bucky’s ma, that’s Mrs. Barnes. Her friends call her Winnie. And this fella,” he explained by the light of a burning barrel fire one night, “this is Bucky’s da—”

“Da?” Dolly cocked her head to the side.

“Da, umm… Well, he calls his da Pop.” Steve wracked his brain for a way to explain. “See, how it is, is that Buck’s only half-Irish. I’m Irish through and through, so I called my pop Da.” He scratched his head. “Different terms of endearment for different parents…? Aw, hell. You ain’t gonna understand that, either.”

“She knows damned well what a pop and a da are, Rogers. She’s got two of you.” Peggy interjected from across the barrel fire with a laugh around the rim of her brandy-laced tea. Then, for his ears only, “Anyone with eyes can see you and Barnes are as good as married, and her only family, to boot. Don’t over-complicate it for her.”

“Da?” The corners of Dolly’s lips turned up in a shy smile like she understood Peggy perfectly. She leaned over the portrait and tapped Steve on the breast bone just like Bucky explaining names back in Medical. “Da.”

Steve nodded. “Yeah, I guess I’d be your da, too, Dolly.”

And that’s how it went. Bucky was her pop and Steve was her da, and nobody could tell her otherwise.

But eventually, a decision had to be made. Dolly needed to go home.

“Col. Phillips and Captain Rogers arranged with Howard to transport her discreetly to the States via private, civilian transport.” Peggy informed him while Steve helped Dolly pack and stack her luggage outside, and the Howlies sat around, looking like someone kicked their puppy. “Howard has business in the city anyway, and he’ll get her settled in with your parents while he’s there. The captain said you called to notify them?” Peggy double-checked.

“Yeah, got passed around to my sisters while they spread the word to Ma that me and Stevie made her a grandmother over here.” He snorted a laugh, thinking of the certified copy of Dolly’s new birth certificate in his SSR file, claiming the teen girl as his next of kin. “Ma was so confused. Happy for us, but confused.”

“Indeed.” Peggy chuckled. “Howard will explain everything else when he arrives. If there’s any trouble at all—”

“My parents can handle it,” Bucky interrupted.

“All the same,” Peggy resumed, “she’ll have SSR protections and assistance in place, should she need it, and Howard will see to it that she wants for nothing.”

Bucky’s feathers ruffled at that. “She’ll have access to me and Steve’s army and personal accounts, and my family’s. It’s all arranged. The Barneses ain’t the Rockefellers, but my grandparents’ old townhouse is in a good neighborhood with good people and plenty of work. I’ll be damned if Dolly needs any of Howard’s—”

Peggy preempted his complaints with a staying hand. “She’s also been made your next of kin and beneficiary, as requested. You’re sure about this?”

“She deserves a little normalcy in her life.” Like the disapproving father he’d suddenly become overnight, Bucky crossed his arms and eyed the fella checking the oil in the jeep meant to carry Dolly and Howard to the airstrip.

“We haven’t any idea who or _what_ she is,” Peggy pointed out. “We’ve no idea what sort of normal is normal for her … kind.”

“There ain’t nothin’ that angel can dish out to my parents that me and Stevie, and Becca, and all my little sisters haven’t already put them through at least twice.” Bucky smirked. He thought not at all fondly of the herd of teener girls running tame through his family home on any given week’s end. Lord, he did not miss sharing a bathroom with six sisters and every girl they knew from parochial day school, not a one who had anywhere better to be than squealing over some fella’s hair or another one’s trouser fit after the church luncheon every Sunday. As if there weren’t another three water closets elsewhere in the house. Why they always invaded Bucky’s on the fourth floor was beyond his ken.

Peggy took a deep breath. “You know, if you married her, she could stay nearby, where we could all keep an eye out for her well being—”

“You and me both know she’s still a good few years too young and got all the wrong parts to be tied to me that way forever,” he pointed out, reminding Carter of his personal preferences the army’d only been willing to overlook in favor of his skill with a rifle and his best fella’s face on the propaganda posters, “and you gotta be of sound mind to agree to a weddin’, anyway. She can’t even answer the most basic questions about what she wants for breakfast, much less consent to participating in a Catholic marriage ceremony, Carter.”

Peggy sighed. “I worry for her.”

“You an’ me, both. If anything happens to me and Steve—”

“My personal mission after this war will be to see to her comfort and care, Sergeant Barnes, I promise you.”

“Why are you doing this? Helping?” Bucky turned to look the agent up and down. “And don’t say for Steve,” he hissed under his breath. “You and me and God above know you and Steve are only making calves eyes at each other to shut up the gossipmongers and help Stevie put on a good, manly face for the War Department. Why, really?”

“I saw the boot prints on her back and ribs, too, James.” Peggy sucked in a sharp breath and clenched her teeth. “I don’t know everything they did to her, but this way I can guarantee that _one_ thing won’t ever happen again.”

“There were no records rooms in the base. Nothing at all but the usual military reports on day to day operations at the guards’ outposts. Like she didn’t even exist.” Bucky wondered over that again, like he had so many times in the past few weeks.

“The commanding officer may have had orders to keep no written records on site of the work completed in their labs or to burn them if the base looked like it was going to be taken,” Peggy pointed out. “Frankly, I think we’re lucky there was no kill order to prevent her from falling into Allied hands.”

“You know something, though,” Bucky surmised.

“I strongly suspect,” Peggy corrected him.

“What?”

“That she was related to the base commander in some way. Some experiment or offspring of an experiment that wasn’t supposed to exist. I think there are no records because someone meant to hide her—not only from us, but perhaps from Hydra as well.”

“But if she was the commander’s daughter, why would he mistreat his own—”

“He likely didn’t perceive her as a human being worthy of comfort or compassion. These Nazis…” Peggy shook her head. “They look at the poor Jews and don’t even see _people_. Lord knows what happened to Dolly’s mother, nor who or what the poor woman was to the base commander. Terrible men are capable of terrible deeds, Sergeant.”

Bucky growled. The driver assigned to take Howard and Dolly to the airport eyed the girl under Bucky’s care with overt appreciation in her belted men's trousers and ill-fitted undershirt. Bucky barked at him to go see the company clerk for his orders and quit looking for trouble.

“And good men are capable of great feats of compassion and kindness, James.” Peggy laughed and bussed Bucky’s cheek noisily like one of his hoyden sisters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WEEKLY UPDATES ON DOLL WILL RESUME AFTER HALLOWEEN (when the author hopefully will not still have a house full of sick people underfoot at all hours).


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience, my darlings! I needed a break after the marathon of Promptober. I think I’ve got enough chapters of Doll finished to carry me through Christmas now, with regular updates, so I thought we’d pick up where we left off and see if this little story that could can pick up an audience. 
> 
> Beta’d by @phoenix-173 and @ibelieveinturtles
> 
> Warning for the briefest of mentions of non-consensual sex and conception.

“It’s time.”

Howard exhaled into his hands to warm them in the bitter cold morning air. Even during the warmish early autumn months, the forests of northern France could turn wickedly cold overnight. The Commandos and their SOs put off Howard and Dolly’s departure for one reason and another for several days before Carter finally put her foot down and insisted Dolly’s doting papas wish her well and see her properly on her way.

Which did nothing to prevent the two of them, all of the Commandos, and a welter of nurses and junior corpsman from piling into jeeps to follow them to the makeshift airstrip. With a beleaguered sigh, Carter came along for the ride to bark further instructions at Howard on the way.

“It’s important to be clear,” Carter reminded Howard for the hundredth time, “Dolly is officially recognized and classified by the SSR as an oh-eight-oh, object or person of known origin and provenance, and has been _assigned_ to the Barnes family under their sole guardianship. She is, however, listed under code level clearance, eyes only, and, as far as the War Department is concerned, could just be a box of comic books returned to the Barneses from their son. No one outside of the SSR has adequate code clearance to know what’s in the package delivered to the Barneses. If anyone asks, they’re to say it’s a parcel they were instructed not to open or give to anyone without an SSR identification card.”

“I know all this, Pegs.”

“Well, then, it won’t hurt to have a refresher.” She flipped open Dolly’s file. “Now, about the other item you suggested—”

“There’s a girl in the village, other side of the hill to the south,” Howard cut in. “I’ve had a few of my assistants keeping tabs on her since word got around that the baby was fathered by a German soldier and she’d like to place it with a convent or some such.”

“Right,” Peggy clipped the folder to a clipboard and made a note. “She’s agreeable to having the baby’s picture made with the captain and sergeant?”

“Girl couldn’t give a fig one way or the other. From what I gather, she wasn’t a willing participant in its creation.” Howard growled at the notion. Goddamn Nazis. The reluctant, young mother couldn’t be any older than Dolly appeared to be.

“And for her trouble, are we spiriting her off somewhere away from the front?” Peggy inquired, ready to note that down, too.

Howard shook his head. “For her cooperation, she’s being compensated very generously for allowing the child to appear in an ad for the War Department. As far as she knows, the money’s come from the SSR. That's all anybody needs to know anyhow. Afterward, and with the mother’s permission, the baby will be placed with an American family for its protection from the Nazis. That’s all _she_ needs to know.”

“Which family?” Peggy demanded, suddenly reminding Howard he might not have brought Peggy in on the loop on that bit.

“The Barneses agreed to that, too.” One of Bucky Barnes’ baby sisters had a few young boys of her own already, according to their mother. It wouldn’t be any trouble to take a second foundling into the fold if it helped hide Dolly amongst the many Barnes daughters. “The photographer from the War Department should arrive three days after we touch down. The baby will be delivered to the Barneses as if the sergeant really did adopt a baby.”

“You’re sure the ruse is necessary?” Peggy pursed her lips and glared at the inset photo snapped by one of his assistants of the baby from the village.

“Dolly’s rate of cellular decay is essentially nonexistent. She may age someday, but more testing will be necessary to find out when and at what rate. Someone outside the army will notice eventually,” Howard pointed out. “We waited so long to figure out where to send her because we needed those test results. Besides, the birthdate on her birth certificate is the day they found her in the Hydra base. The bait and switch could protect her down the road, too, if someone looks real close and only finds a normal human baby where Barnes’ kid is supposed to be. Who’s to say we bag every Nazi between here and the end of the war?”

“Alright.” Peggy laid the clipboard down in her lap and turned around to glance at the jeep behind them, bumping over some of the worst roads in Europe. Howard's gaze followed Peg's. Dolly sat snug between her fathers, Barnes’ left arm slung low around her waist and Rogers’ right thrown over her shoulder to grasp Barnes’ shoulder. Weeks together and, already, they made a tight family unit.

Howard could only hope Dolly dealt well with the separation. He saw the same raw worry on Peg’s face.

“I’ll stick close for a few days,” Howard assured her. “She’s mad for technical journals. I’ll drop by the mansion and grab a few crates of old specs for Barnes’ sisters to bribe her with to continue learning to read. She’s stubborn as all hell, but loves those numbers.”

He fiddled with a button on his coat, announcing out of the blue, “I’m giving them the country house upstate.”

“What country house?” Peggy ground out, trying to keep her temper at each new piece of information he flung at her seemingly out of nowhere.

“I bought a cottage up in the Adirondacks. It’s a nice place, off the beaten path, plenty of space for all the Barnes kids. They could go there on the week’s end or ship the baby there, or send Dolly up with one of the kids, if the rest can’t get away…” He shrugged, indifferent to how they used it so long as the kid had a quiet place away from the noise of the city. Howard learned the hard way what happened when loud noises startled the girl. She damn near bent a stainless steel table in half when Dugan walked up behind her unexpectedly in the shop one day while she perused schematics over Howard’s shoulder.

Peggy sighed. “Be sure you mention it when you deliver the girl to the sergeant’s parents, rather than just sending the keys with no note.” Then, relenting, she added, “That’s very thoughtful of you, Howard.”

But Howard was nothing if not honest, even with himself. “More like self-serving. If she’s got a head for numbers and can learn her letters, she can catch up to the kids her age, sooner or later, and have a say in finding out more about who and what she is, if she can’t tell us more when she has the words.”

Peggy’s expression dimmed. “She isn’t a lab rat, Howard.”

“Nor will she be,” he responded immediately. “Not if she’s got a say in what she agrees to and understands what’s being asked of her. I’ve had a word with Phillips about bringing in tutors, too. None but the best.”

“He agreed to that?” Peggy looked surprised.

“To be honest, I think he would have agreed to nearly anything that got me out of his hair faster.” Howard snickered. “But he’s aware of what the War Department did to Rogers rather than letting him work in the field. Phillips hasn’t got much faith in them to do the right thing in this case, either.”

Peggy folded her arms across her chest and harrumphed for show. “Well, I suppose that’s a reasonable assumption.”

It would have to be because the airstrip emerged from the fog as the sun burned it off and their jeeps rolled to a stop by the control tower. Dolly stepped lightly after the sergeant who helped her to the ground in her neatly tied combat boots, mens’ trousers and undershirt.

Waiting patiently, Howard stood to one side while the captain made his farewells first.

“Be good for your gran, girl, and we’ll be home to Brooklyn just as soon as we can after the war.” He smiled indulgently when she crashed into him, wrapping her arms around him in a cuddle that would make a lesser man beg for mercy. “Love you, Dolly. You take care now, sweetheart.” He pressed a tender kiss to her hairline and handed her off to Barnes with a tremulous smile.

The sergeant stepped up, passing over her luggage from the jeep to one of the fellas working ground crew that day. “Come ‘ere, kiddo.” He opened his arms and the girl fell into his embrace, face wet with tears, despite her silence. They held one another for a long time, drinking in one last embrace before circumstances forced them apart like so many war-torn families.

Rogers retrieved a leather folio from one of her bags and flipped it open to explain one last time, “Howard’s taking you here—” He pointed to the Barnes townhouse in the sketch on the page behind the people ranged across the steps in front of the house. “These are your gran and grandpop, and all your aunts; this is Becca, Hannah, Ruthanne, who everyone calls Ruthie, Grace, Rachel, and Deborah, but everyone calls her Debbie—”

“—cept me,” Barnes interjected. “I call her—”

“—names that don’t bear repeating,” Rogers cut him off at the pass. He flipped the folio closed and handed it over to the young woman with the same sad smile.

“Da,” she said softly, leaning out of Barnes’ hold to cup Rogers’ cheek.

Rogers leaned into her touch and pressed a gentle kiss to her cheek. “Be a good girl for your gran, sweetheart.”

“And tell my pop I said he’s not allowed to spoil you like he ruined all my little sisters,” Barnes joked, but it fell flat with his intended audience. “That joke’s gonna be funny someday and you’ll laugh like hell,” Barnes grumbled, gathering her close for one more hug.

“Pop,” she murmured, laying her cheek against his.

“Love you, kiddo.” Barnes whispered, forcing Howard to look away from the pain etched on the man’s face.

“Pop,” the girl repeated once more before reluctantly letting him go to pass out hugs and kisses to the other Howling Commandos. For nineteen-year-old Morita, she lingered over a long hug, but hurried through a chaste kiss that left them both blushing crimson and Barnes scowling.

Then, it was time to board the plane.

They were supposed to be the only non-military personnel on board the Douglas C-47A Skytrain and, sure enough, they were about the only personnel on it, period. Someone planned this voyage well, Howard conceded. Only a few army nurses took up space in another part of the plane, far from where Dolly and Howard were assigned to sit for the flight. They waved from the windows at the small party gathered to see them off.

Moments later, they were airborne.

Howard thrilled to see the girl’s eyes alight with interest as Europe disappeared beneath them and the plane climbed to a safer cruising altitude above the range of surface to air artillery. Clutching her Bucky Bear in a death grip, she touched a tentative finger to the window, hissing when the cold outside registered through the glass inside.

“It’s colder up this high,” Howard explained, making a motion to indicate being cold, shivering.

She nodded and looked back to the window.

“Excited?” Howard ventured.

Dolly only looked at him, curious.

Feeling like an idiot, he mimed happiness, excitement, bouncing and clapping in his seat.

Dolly threw back her head and laughed, then nodded. Yes, she knew excited.

Howard could only hope the feeling lasted once she got a load of the Barneses.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Howard and Dolly arrive in New York!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested listening: Experience by Ludovico Einaudi
> 
> Beta’d by @ibelieveinturtles and @phoenix-173

After a few quick puddle-jumps across Europe to deliver supplies and pick up Howard’s private plane in Scotland, they touched down in New York with the sun chasing them across the Atlantic toward sunrise. Dolly sat by Howard’s side in the cockpit, quiet, but curious, as he narrated every minute adjustment made on the flight to take her home to the sergeant’s family. She took direction well, bright-eyed and fascinated little thing she was, and even managed to fly the plane on her own for a few steady minutes while Howard pointed out gauges and talked her through the process as if she understood every word.

While only every fifteenth word might make sense, Howard suspected she _could_ potentially learn at an accelerated rate, if the intake testing performed by SSR specialists was any indicator as to her level of intelligence. The little lady was some kind of genius, only locked inside her own head by the inability to communicate with spoken word.

Temporarily.

“Howard,” she gasped, wild-eyed and breathless, lightly gripping his shoulder as the ground rose up to meet them from the airstrip surrounded seemingly on all sides by water. It made for quite a showy landing, to be sure.

A lone SSR agent met them at New York Municipal Airport just as dawn painted the sky in shades of pink and purple. If Howard were a more poetic sort, he’d suppose it was New York’s warm way of welcoming home its’ favorite sons’ new daughter.

“Mr. Stark,” the agent greeted their party with a nod as Howard descended to the tarmac with Dolly clinging to his arm, drinking in the bigger than life presence of New York surrounding them on all sides. The agent cleared her throat and snapped a salute. “Agent…?”

“Miss,” Dolly corrected absently, inspecting the female agent’s uniform and silently filing away whatever she gleaned from the brief interaction.

“Miss…?” the agent tried again, but Dolly’s attention drifted to the laborers in Stark International uniforms unloading the plane’s cargo under orders from Howard’s body man, Edwin Jarvis. Jarvis’ wife, Ana, waited by the car with a basket and a cold weather coat of familiar design thrown over one arm.

“You got it?” Howard asked, bounding over to the woman in three quick strides to look over the dark wool peacoat constructed in exacting detail to replicate the one worn by Barnes in a size more suited to the young Miss Barnes.

“Your top secret agent delivered the bolt of fabric not two nights ago. I’ve barely had time to eat, sleep, and learn how to sew through your prefabbed, bullet-proof wool since it arrived.” The redhead clucked her tongue at Howard. “Are you sure it’s the right sort of thing for a young woman, though? I doubt you have much experience shopping for young women of her age. This coat pattern seems…” She rolled one hand in the air. “A bit mannish, you know. You can’t fit a young woman like a man. That’s how the army ended up with such hideously ugly, boxy uniforms for the WACs.”

Howard smirked and stepped aside to reveal Dolly waiting patiently behind him in her OD green trousers, ill-fitted, mens undershirt sans the hated brassiere, and tidy combat boots. At the sight, Mrs. Jarvis bit her lip and closed her eyes, uttering a filthy curse under her breath.

“Well,” she said, eyes popping open wide as if to reset her way of thinking, “it’s a good thing you sent ahead the rest of the young lady’s measurements. I’ve had the maids running all over New York, tracking down frocks and school uniforms and the like to take in. Shoes are a bit trickier,” she said, eyeing the younger woman’s masculine boots. “Something comfortable, I suppose. Oxfords or saddle shoes would do for most girls her age, but I think we’ll look into some riding and hiking boots, while we’re fitting her out. And more trousers. A good dozen more trousers and, ugh,” she curled her lip in distaste, “some dungarees, I suppose.”

“Excellent.” Howard clapped his hands. “You’ve got twelve hours and she only speaks about three dozen words in English. Best of luck to you with that,” he finished, bustling Mrs. Jarvis toward the car while he waved Dolly over to join them.

“Now, hold on just one minute, Mr. Stark! Twelve hours?!” the woman yelped as Dolly joined Howard’s shoving and climbed up and over the woman to explore the interior of the vehicle in closer detail. “You’re mad, Mr. Stark!” Mrs. Jarvis squawked from beneath Howard’s intent, young charge.

“Mad for knowledge.” Howard clapped his hands together and waggled his brows at Jarvis over the hood of the car.

“I’ll have the maids set the table at luncheon for two, shall I?” Jarvis rolled his eyes.

“Make it luncheon for at least six—Dolly eats like Rogers now that he’s three times the size of the pipsqueak we found at the expo, and phone Rebecca Barnes to ask if she’d like to join us before Dolly meets the rest of the family,” Howard barked, climbing in after the girl as Mrs. Jarvis scooted out and rounded the hood to take a seat up front beside her husband. Howard poked his head back out the open window. “Dolly’s learning to speak, but the process is slow. The more opportunities she has to practice now, the better, so you’ll be joining us for luncheon, too. Say, maybe the gardener and that fella who cleans the pool would like to stop by for a sandwich—”

“Mr. Stark,” Jarvis looked offended. “As if I would serve something so common as a miner’s handpie for the young lady’s first luncheon in America.”

“Well, what are we having then?” Howard demanded, thumping the roof of the car and waving them on as Jarvis dusted his hands on a handkerchief and took his seat behind the wheel.

“We have a fine prime rib of beef from your farm upstate, Mr. Stark, as well as jacketed potatoes, a crisp, lightly dressed, iceberg wedge, sliced peaches, and an array of seafood the SSR information briefing sent ahead suggested Miss Barnes would prefer. Soft-shell crabs, clams, mussels, oysters, and lightly fried mollusks of all sorts provided by Agent Carter’s firm, as well as a mysterious, powdered, greenish-black substance with an odor like high tide to be reconstituted as if it were American _Kool-Aid_ ," he fairly sneered. "The agent claimed it to be essential to Miss Barnes’ continued good health. For dessert, service includes three kinds of pie: apple, pumpkin, and a chocolate pecan pie, a proper layer cake, and Neapolitan ice cream.” He glanced into the rearview mirror. “Every new American should have ice cream at their first meal in New York.”

Howard shared a private smile and a nod of gratitude for his valet’s thoughtfulness. He couldn’t wait to see Dolly’s face the first time she tried chocolate ice cream, nor Rebecca Barnes’ the first time she witnessed Dolly tuck into a meal. He sat back against the seat and smiled at the girl when she discovered the little bar in the passenger area of the Rolls. She plunked three ice cubes into a glass and tossed them back all at once, crunching on them like a kid with a mouthful of malted milk balls at the candy counter.

It promised to be a hell of a day, indeed.

They pulled away from the curb without a backward glance, forgetting entirely the mousy SSR agent and whatever purpose she had in coming to greet them in the first place.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dolly and Howard have another run-in with the SSR agent. It goes about as well as you’d expect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stan Lee has mentioned Stark Mansion is based on the [Frick Mansion](https://www.frick.org/visit/virtual_tour) On Fifth Avenue
> 
> Beta'd by @phoenix-173 in part, but the chapter has been lengthened and edited several times since her last chance to review it, so all remaining errors are mine.

Upon arrival at Fifth Avenue, they barely had time to remove their coats before the bell rang. (In the car on the way over, Dolly fussed over her new peacoat like her pop hummed happily over a new rifle.)

“Whoever it is,” Howard waved Jarvis toward the interruption, “tell ‘em ‘not today’.” He offered Dolly his arm after Mrs. Jarvis took their coats. Eager to show off the Gilded Age mansion, Howard tucked Dolly’s arm through his own and turned for the Grand Staircase.

Sarah Doll Barnes did not disappoint her host in the least. She marveled at the decadence of the Beaux-Arts architecture, whooping and loosing her hold on Howard to dart up the steps, and run her hands over every gilded curlicue and marble-lined brick in the impressive space. He threw his head back and laughed, clapping in delight when she doubled back to finger-crawl all over the vintage 1914 Aeolian organ in the arched niche off of the vestibule. The organ’s rich tones filled the entryway, drawing a ringing laugh from Dolly like a church bell in concert with the notes of the organ. She had an ear for it, too, Howard noted with some surprise as she easily picked out a familiar tune popular on the wireless back at the hundred-and-seventh.

“Sir, I’m terribly sorry, but it appears as if you ought take this meeting,” Jarvis said, reappearing behind Howard.

“Dammit, Jarvis.” Howard grunted in disgust; Dolly’d just noticed the arched window opening onto the east vestibule and climbed right up and over, dropping to her feet with feline grace. She sprinted down the corridor and Howard gave chase. “Not now, Jarvis!” he bellowed, catching sight of just the heel of her boot as she disappeared into the anteroom between the Boucher study and the dining room. Panting, he discovered her in the study with her nose all but pressed to one of its murals, studying the quaint, pastoral scene without a hair out of place.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Howard paused in the doorway to catch his breath, stuffing his hands in his pockets for lack of something with which to fiddle. “They’re panels. They pop right off.” He crossed the room to show her what he meant, revealing the catch hidden beneath the molding. He stepped back to stand by Dolly and gaze up at the cherubic children frolicking at a picnic. He snorted a laugh. “Thought my mother would like it, if she were still with us, you know, so I put together a pretty room and, here we are, nobody uses it but to stare at a bunch of fat, happy babies rolling around in a field.”

Dolly touched Howard’s elbow to gain his attention, then, with his eyes following her cautious movement, she reached over to stroke the gilded trim of the panel with care, expressing ‘yes, it’s beautiful’ in the only way she knew how.

“Beautiful.” Howard motioned to the mural, taking the opportunity to teach a new word when presented with it. Dolly tilted her head, looking back and forth between the painted panel and Howard. “ _Beautiful_ , aesthetically appealing to the eye with a pleasing symmetry of features,” he tried again, touching his fingertips lightly to the faces of the children in the painting, then brought up the other hand to touch the delicate flush of color on Dolly’s cheek in the same way. “Like you.”

To which Dolly smiled her pretty, gap-toothed smile and flushed an even brighter shade of pink.

“Best not let her father hear you say that,” a Brooklyn accent drawled from the doorway.

Howard startled, automatically shoving Dolly behind him as he spun to face the intruder—the same unremarkable SSR agent from the airfield.

“The hell are you doing in my house?” he demanded, but before he so much as took a breath to shout for Jarvis, Dolly darted under his arm toward the strange woman, grabbing her by the throat and shoving her against the wall between two murals. Dolly crowded her, baring her uncommonly sharp teeth. The woman under her hands gasped and struggled.

“Agent Barnes!” Jarvis yelped from the anteroom.

_Barnes…_

Shit.

“Dolly, she’s friendly. Friend.” Stomach twisted in knots, Howard rushed to diffuse the girl’s protective anger before she did something they’d all regret, now that he'd had a good look at the agent's face and seen the sergeant's features mirrored in it. “She’s family. Your pop’s family.” He laid a hand over the girl's and gently pulled to slacken her hold, allowing the sergeant's twin sister a drawn breath.

But Howard knew he'd never have been able to save the woman if Dolly's determination won out over his protests. He exhaled the breath he'd been holding and took a moment to appreciate how alive averting near-disaster made a man feel.

Christ, but he needed a drink. 

“Agent Barnes, I am so terribly sorry.” Jarvis knelt by her side to offer a supporting arm when Dolly let go and the woman collapsed on the floor. Howard’s heart pounded in his ears. If something happened to any of the Barnes family…

He was going to need to arrange for some kind of ‘round the clock security in case of another such misunderstanding before Dolly had the vocabulary to properly interrogate intruders in her future family home.

“My fault,” the agent gasped, coughing and sputtering until Mrs. Jarvis rushed in with a glass and the carafe of water from the library. The young woman sipped carefully and sat back on her heels. Running a hand over her forehead, she unpinned and tucked the garrison cap properly under her arm, and attempted to neaten her mussed coiffure. “That’s some grip you got, kid. Buck teach you that fancy hold?” she rasped.

Dolly, sulking near at hand, perked up at the mention of her pop’s name. “Buck?” she repeated, then narrowed her eyes at their unexpected guest.

The agent nodded. “In my pocket,” she gestured vaguely toward her uniform jacket with her hands in plain sight. “There’s a picture.”

“Jarvis, if you would.” Howard nodded toward the woman’s pocket.

Scandalized, Jarvis protested, “Sir!”

“Oh, for heaven’s sweet sake,” Mrs. Jarvis tutted and rolled her eyes. She bent daintily at the knees to search the woman’s pocket, pulling out a small leather folio. Inside, a tightly bound book held dozens of sketches signed “S. Rogers”, with a few less skilled cartoons signed “JBB”, featuring the captain, his sergeant, and the agent on the floor, all three dressed in civvies, over the years before the war.

“Steve drew the .. art-y ones. The cartoons are Bucky’s handiwork. A drawing for every good mark I made in school, back when I’d as soon soon brawl as study.” She huffed an exhausted laugh and brought her hands up to frame her cheeks. “Seems like everybody who spends five minutes with Steve Rogers ends up fighting in his place, often as not.”

Gingerly, keeping everything where Dolly could see, she took the sketchbook from Mrs. Jarvis and flipped open the folio to show a photo of herself, Barnes, and Rogers, sunning on the beach at Coney Island, tucked between the pages as a bookmark.

“There’s Bucky.” She pointed to a handsome, younger version of the sergeant in fashionable, brief swimming trunks that showed off his ideal, tanned physique. “And this, here, is me.” She indicated the woman in the photo, dressed in her own highly fashionable beach bathing costume in a skirted one-piece with sailor stripes. “And here’s Steve.” She tapped the image of the blond pipsqueak in dark, wool knit, swim trunks sagging in all the places they oughtn’t and giving the younger man an even paler and more sickly complexion than before he stepped into Erskine's experiment.

It was easy to forget, sometimes, just how far that little pipsqueak had come.

Dolly snatched the photo out of Agent Barnes’ hands and crossed the room to stand nearer the wired sconce for better lighting. Her fingers traced the faces of the first two, but her eyes paused long and hard on the last person, tilting her head and studying the image, even going so far as to bring it right up to her nose to stare.

“Da?” she asked, glancing over the snapshot at Howard, incredulous, delicate eyebrows raised in disbelief.

Howard could only laugh weakly and nod, but Agent Barnes cackled madly. “Hardly seems possible, does it?” she wheezed, eyes alight with mischief. She sprawled against the wall with a hand on the floor, knees tucked to the side in ladylike fashion.

But Dolly only shook her head, tilting to the side with a bemused smile. “Da,” she murmured, pressing the photo to her breastbone and hugging it close. “Pop,” she sighed, eyes closed, twisting gently back and forth as the fellas liked to do while wrapping her in a sweet hug.

“There’s more photos like that back home. Boxes and albums just full of 'em.” The agent nodded at the snapshot in Dolly’s arms. “I’m stationed at Fort Hamilton, but my ma and pop are eager as the day is long to meet their new granddaughter.”

“Pop' _s not allowed to spoil you like he ruined all my little sisters_ ,” Dolly perfectly mimicked the sergeant’s voice.

“Sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” Agent Barnes gawked. “She do that a lot?” the agent demanded.

But Howard could only shrug. “Damned if I know, ma’am. This is the first I’ve heard her do it, though she’s got a hell of an ear for music, too, from what all I’ve seen.”

“Cripes.” Agent Barnes climbed to her feet. “Let’s hope she doesn’t make a habit of it. She’ll drive Ma mad in a week, what with Deborah’s new affection for Buck’s old bottle rockets giving her heart palpitations as it is.”

“ _There ain’t nothin’ that angel can dish out to my parents that me and Stevie, and Becca, and all my little sisters haven’t already put them through at least twice,_ ” Dolly parroted her pop’s words and voice again with ease, proving she understood far more than Howard would have thought.

Agent Barnes’ grin only widened. “Oh, yeah, you’ll fit right in, kid, and drive Ma mad as a hatter in no time.” She shook out her cap and dusted off her skirt. “Nothin’ she hasn’t earned. You know she once entered Bucky in a baby parade as Little Bo Peep? Put sheep's ears on me and the dog, too, she did. Pop had a fit. We’ve got photos of the parade _and_ Pop's fit!” she proclaimed happily, offering the younger woman her hand. Dolly accepted, drifting closer to her pop’s twin sister to have a closer look.

“ _Becca?_ ” she asked, switching again to her pop's voice, and touching her aunt’s face. Then followed it with, “ ** _Beautiful_** _,_ _aesthetically appealing to the eye with a pleasing symmetry of features_ ,” in Howard’s own voice, startling a laugh from the industry magnate.

Agent Barnes’ eye sparkled with delight. “Only you and Sgt. Dugan seem to think enough of it to say so, but I’ll take your word for it, kiddo.”

“Sgt. Dugan…” Howard mused. He had no idea.

“We’ve been known to write a letter or two for keeping company. Have been since he was at boot camp with Bucky at Fort Hamilton.” Agent Barnes tidied her jacket unnecessarily, then turned to her niece. “But don’t tell your pop.”

Dolly shook her head and rolled her lips in to bite them as if to say she’d never.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Agent Becca Barnes is loosely based on the younger [Mrs. Landingham from The West Wing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwaQExqyGUk)

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to all my regulars who swing by the comment section with words of encouragement. This story isn't a popular one, so I rely greatly on the comments left by those who _do_ read it to motivate me to keep writing and updating when time and anxiety allow. Thanks for keeping this fanfiction thing fun, just the way it should be. You're the best.
> 
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